Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I'm pleased to join Senator Breaux today to introduce a bill that will allow all providers of broadband services to compete under the same rules and regulations. This bill will bring certainty to the regulatory environment ensuring more Americans will have a choice in their broadband service provider. Access to broadband is crucial to consumers and communities in today's economy. High-speed connections to the Internet can provide a lifeline to small businesses, schools and hospitals, and can help communities prosper and grow in the Information Age. But unfortunately, different rules for competing high-speed Internet companies are stifling competition. Phone companies that offer the same service as wireless, satellite, and cable companies face different rules and regulations that raise costs and slow innovation. These rules make it more difficult and expensive for phone companies to provide broadband service, leaving millions of consumers without access to high-speed connections and millions more with only one choice. This service disparity is growing wider, and dozens of communities are at risk of being left behind, especially rural areas and inner-city neighborhoods. This bill will help close the Digital Divide and help ensure that all Americans have choices for high-speed Internet services. This issue is not about choosing winners and losers, it is about helping to ensure that high speed Internet service is not only available but competitive and affordable all across the country. The Breaux-Nickles bill is a free-market, deregulatory approach to encourage private companies to rapidly deploy this new technology. It does nothing to change what the 1996 Telecom Act sought to accomplish, to open up the local voice telephone market to competition. At the time, no one envisioned the growth of the Internet. In fact, the web browser had just been invented. This bill simply eliminates regulations that were intended for the legacy network but have been mistakenly applied to new infrastructure investment. The goal of this bill is to provide an economic incentive for local telephone companies to upgrade their networks and to rapidly deploy high-speed, broadband services throughout the U.S. According to the most recent nation-wide data, there are approximately 11 million high speed Internet subscribers. Of that total, 7.2 million currently use high-speed cable modems and 3.5 million use Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) provided by the telephone companies. Today's rules are not only unfair but they are a disincentive to deployment. No company will invest the capital required to upgrade their network and deploy new technologies when they are required to provide this new, upgraded technology to their competitors at a government-set price. If high speed, broadband service is going to be deployed rapidly throughout the country, especially in rural areas, the answer is not more rules and regulations, but a market-based deregulatory approach. For a new market to evolve quickly and efficiently, government should not regulate the market out of existence before it has a chance to flourish. In fact, yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an editorial expressing concern about over-regulation at a critical time, it states, ``Then the digital revolution ran headlong into the FCC and Congress, whose tender mercies enfolded consumer broadband at the moment of creation.'' It is not too late to encourage growth and innovation. As the Wall Street Journal points out, ``There's still plenty of Internet and telecom enthusiasm out there, if only regulators will let it blossom.'' With regulatory certainty, companies have the incentive to invest. For example, earlier this week, in my home State of Oklahoma, less than two weeks after Gov. Frank Keating signed the first state broadband parity law in the country, SBC Southwestern Bell announced a massive program of technology investment that will nearly double the number of Oklahoma towns with access to high-speed DSL Internet Access Service. This initiative will bring high-speed DSL Internet service to 37 more towns, and expand access by building new broadband equipment in another 25 towns that already have the service. The initiative will make DSL available to about 137,000 more homes and businesses in 62 Oklahoma communities. SBC is making this investment at a time when they, and other telecommunications companies, have dramatically slashed capital spending throughout the country. This is the kind of investment that regulatory certainty and real competition bring and that is why I strongly support this legislation. If we can do for the country what we have done for the state of Oklahoma, Congress will go a long way toward reversing the economic slide currently enveloping the telecom sector. When all broadband providers are allowed to compete under the same rules, consumers win and the economy wins. I am pleased to sponsor this bipartisan approach to promoting competition for broadband services.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I'm pleased to join Senator Breaux today to introduce a bill that will allow all providers of broadband services to compete under the same rules and regulations. This bill will bring certainty to the regulatory environment ensuring more Americans will have a choice in their broadband service provider. Access to broadband is crucial to consumers and communities in today's economy. High-speed connections to the Internet can provide a lifeline to small businesses, schools and hospitals, and can help communities prosper and grow in the Information Age. But unfortunately, different rules for competing high-speed Internet companies are stifling competition. Phone companies that offer the same service as wireless, satellite, and cable companies face different rules and regulations that raise costs and slow innovation. These rules make it more difficult and expensive for phone companies to provide broadband service, leaving millions of consumers without access to high-speed connections and millions more with only one choice. This service disparity is growing wider, and dozens of communities are at risk of being left behind, especially rural areas and inner-city neighborhoods. This bill will help close the Digital Divide and help ensure that all Americans have choices for high-speed Internet services. This issue is not about choosing winners and losers, it is about helping to ensure that high speed Internet service is not only available but competitive and affordable all across the country. The Breaux-Nickles bill is a free-market, deregulatory approach to encourage private companies to rapidly deploy this new technology. It does nothing to change what the 1996 Telecom Act sought to accomplish, to open up the local voice telephone market to competition. At the time, no one envisioned the growth of the Internet. In fact, the web browser had just been invented. This bill simply eliminates regulations that were intended for the legacy network but have been mistakenly applied to new infrastructure investment. The goal of this bill is to provide an economic incentive for local telephone companies to upgrade their networks and to rapidly deploy high-speed, broadband services throughout the U.S. According to the most recent nation-wide data, there are approximately 11 million high speed Internet subscribers. Of that total, 7.2 million currently use high-speed cable modems and 3.5 million use Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) provided by the telephone companies. Today's rules are not only unfair but they are a disincentive to deployment. No company will invest the capital required to upgrade their network and deploy new technologies when they are required to provide this new, upgraded technology to their competitors at a government-set price. If high speed, broadband service is going to be deployed rapidly throughout the country, especially in rural areas, the answer is not more rules and regulations, but a market-based deregulatory approach. For a new market to evolve quickly and efficiently, government should not regulate the market out of existence before it has a chance to flourish. In fact, yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an editorial expressing concern about over-regulation at a critical time, it states, ``Then the digital revolution ran headlong into the FCC and Congress, whose tender mercies enfolded consumer broadband at the moment of creation.'' It is not too late to encourage growth and innovation. As the Wall Street Journal points out, ``There's still plenty of Internet and telecom enthusiasm out there, if only regulators will let it blossom.'' With regulatory certainty, companies have the incentive to invest. For example, earlier this week, in my home State of Oklahoma, less than two weeks after Gov. Frank Keating signed the first state broadband parity law in the country, SBC Southwestern Bell announced a massive program of technology investment that will nearly double the number of Oklahoma towns with access to high-speed DSL Internet Access Service. This initiative will bring high-speed DSL Internet service to 37 more towns, and expand access by building new broadband equipment in another 25 towns that already have the service. The initiative will make DSL available to about 137,000 more homes and businesses in 62 Oklahoma communities. SBC is making this investment at a time when they, and other telecommunications companies, have dramatically slashed capital spending throughout the country. This is the kind of investment that regulatory certainty and real competition bring and that is why I strongly support this legislation. If we can do for the country what we have done for the state of Oklahoma, Congress will go a long way toward reversing the economic slide currently enveloping the telecom sector. When all broadband providers are allowed to compete under the same rules, consumers win and the economy wins. I am pleased to sponsor this bipartisan approach to promoting competition for broadband services.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Craig), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Murkowski), are necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of the sponsors and my colleagues, we could make a point of order that this amendment is not germane because it is not postcloture. I am not going to do that because I was informed they were going to have the same thing offered to the underlying bill. I think it is in the interest of Senators to conclude the bill, and the best way is to table this amendment. This amendment is not germane postcloture. I happen to be on the Finance Committee. All Democrats and Republicans had chances to offer tax increases, and this amendment says don't let this bill take effect in any of the tax provisions until we have tax increases enacted into law. I think that is ridiculous. It is a good way to kill the provisions that the Senator from Montana and the Senator from Iowa worked to put in the bill. Mr. President, I move to table this amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. I would like to engage in a brief discussion with my colleague from Alaska concerning an important provision that is missing from the electricity title of this bill. Would the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Murkowski, agree that it is important to provide a level playing field for competitors in the interstate wholesale electricity market?

Mr. NICKLES. Is today's interstate wholesale electricity market a level playing field, in which all competitors are subject to the same rules?

Mr. NICKLES. I see nothing in the current language of the electricity title of this bill to rectify this disparate treatment. This seems unfair, and contrary to our policy of promoting competitive markets in interstate electricity sales. Would the Senator from Alaska agree?

Mr. NICKLES. I thank the Senator for that viewpoint. Do not misinterpret what we are saying. This is not about ``spreading the pain'' around to everybody. Rather, what we are saying is that if a municipally-owned or cooperatively-owned utility makes a strategic business decision to go into the competitive interstate bulk power market to earn profits, then it ought to play by the same rules as everybody else. And once they enter that market, it is important that the market competition takes place on a level playing field, or else competition will be diminished and consumers will suffer. So I would like to go forward, in conference, and work with my friend, Senator Murkowski, and others of like mind, to correct this situation and ensure equal treatment for all who chose to compete in the interstate wholesale electricity market.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: Is that amendment germane postcloture?

Mr. NICKLES. Is the amendment out of order?

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, for the information of my colleague, I am happy for him to discuss it, but I will make a point of order at the appropriate time.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to inform my friend from Florida that I will make a couple of comments and then move to table. But if he wishes to speak before the tabling motion, I would be happy to let him do so.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, my colleague and good friend is on the Finance Committee, as am I. We had an opportunity to offset it if we wanted to in committee. We didn't do it. I don't know why this particular amendment is picked out. But I think it is a mistake to try to strike this language. This language says you can't expense over 2 years' payments that are made to keep a lease ongoing. Sometimes a person or a company may have a lease to drill or to explore. For whatever reason, they can't initiate exploration. It may be because of political problems. Maybe they can't get a particular permit. Maybe the price has dropped so low that it is not feasible. But they want to keep the lease open. So they make payments. Under the provision in the bill, we say those payments are expensed over 2 years. Frankly, they should be expensed in the year made. I might note we passed countless amendments that said let us give a tax credit for this. We will reduce taxes substantially; in other words, have the taxpayers subsidize it. In this case, we are not looking for subsidies. If somebody writes a check, we are asking that they be able to expense that check. Frankly, the provision in the Senate bill is over 2 years. It should be 1 year. When you write the check ``for lease payment,'' you could have an example where somebody has a lease to drill someplace, and a political obstruction has arisen--maybe State, maybe Federal, maybe whatever--and they are not able to commence exploration. But if they don't make payments, they would lose the lease. They should be able to expense those payments in the year made. The bill before us says they should be able to expense it in 2 years. That is more than defensible. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion to table the Graham amendment. I move to table the Graham amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.